


the other name for death (is freedom)

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [250]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Gen, Gwindor just wants Maedhros to be ok and, Horses, Interlude, Maedhros isn't, Mithrim, POV First Person, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24584716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Gwindor finds comfort, of a kind.
Relationships: Gwindor & Arien, Gwindor & Gelmir, Gwindor & Maedhros | Maitimo
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [250]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	the other name for death (is freedom)

I don’t see Belle.

Lord, I know she has a new name—or an old one. Same as if I’d let the whole world call me _Soldier_ , forgetting what my mother called me first.

(My mother—gone too soon. I don’t think of her often.)

I’m too spent to be afraid, gazing round the perimeter of this here hall, with its broad table shoved to one wall, bedrolls lining a rush-covered floor. Might as well be another slave camp, from one way of looking at it.

I’m too spent not to see my whole life spilling blood and dust into this new world.

“Gwindor?” One of Haleth’s people. Fingon’s woman. She has a name, too, and I do know it. _Wachiwi_. She points. “She said not to worry, if you came looking. The children went out for fresh air.”

_I can’t see them._

_Not tonight_ , I said, stubborn-like. I didn’t know anything, blinded by the sight of him, except that I couldn’t let him despair. _No, you’re too tuckered to see them tonight._

He was crying again. He gripped the quilt with his left hand, as if he’d do anything rather than bring it to cover his face. He used to do that with both hands, when he had them, and when he was safe enough. He’d hide from me, when the world wasn’t watching. He hadn’t dared, when they stripped him in the sight of all.

He didn’t dare now.

 _Russandol_ , I said. _Maedhros._

He only cried harder. When I’d begged him to be calm until I was fairly bawling myself, he managed to say,

_Don’t call me that._

Leaving this fort feels like a trick. I was a free man once, but it’s clear they beat the fight out of me, for all I helped _him_ rebel. I put one foot in front of the other, in the blue night, and I expect the rope and the lash, or perhaps the cold eye of a gun barrel sliding in sweat on the back of my neck.

No such thing follows.

Instead, the path goes down under my feet, down towards the bridge. I see the darker shapes of the stables to my right, and since I don’t think Belle— _Estrela_ —would go far, I take myself there.

I’m right. Flicker of light; a golden eye blinking softly and beckoning.

“Estrela,” I say. “It’s me. It’s just Gwindor.”

“Frog won’t come out,” she calls. “They said he could sleep here. Finrod did, I mean. And one of—a brother agreed.”

Where is _here_? The Frog-boy is a strange child. But who wouldn’t be, raised among wolves by sheep who knew nothing but shearing?

I push in through the half doors, following the light.

_Oh, fucking hell_ , he sighed. The tears were drying on his cheeks. Did Mairon beat his face? It didn’t seem like him—he preferred precision. But knowing Russandol, he could have made the fiend angry enough to spit.

Angry enough not to kill him.

That’s its own kind of punishment.

 _Good to hear your foul tongue at work again_ , I said. Then, in my clumsy way, I forced myself to add, _Say what you like. No one’s listening but me and the dog._

 _I can’t_ , he said simply, looking at me in that way of his. I wonder if they know that way; his people. They must, because they love him so. It’s all in the power of his gaze. _Gwindor, I can’t. I can’t speak. Don’t make me._

He did not say, _don’t let them make me_ , but I heard it all the same.

Estrela is standing in the long corridor between the stall, wrapped in a borrowed shawl. All we have is borrowed, of course. The lantern, she holds in her right hand.

“Frog,” she says. “Frog, I don’t trust the horses. Won’t you come out? You can sleep in the haymow. I’ll stay with you.”

The pain in my shoulder is something fierce. I pound it with my knuckles, for it’s a wonder to be left a hand’s worth of them.

“He aiming to get kicked in the head?”

“He says it’s very soft,” she answers, sighing. “Sticks is inside, mind you. She got tired of the cold.”

I can’t see much, by the light of one lantern. All I know is, the horse is a massive beast, breath pouring like steam from its nostrils. It flicks its mane and tail a bit, enough to make me recall the swish of braided leather in my slave’s memory, but it doesn’t seem angry.

Frog is an almost imperceptible hump in the corner of its stall. He’s humming to himself.

_They went with you, then._ He was forcing himself not to move his hand again. I could see that in its flat plane. If he were himself—if he _could_ be himself, he would be picking at threads.

All I know, now, is that he’s half-mad with pain. Color of his face, and the set of it, tell me that.

 _They did._ I answered. I don’t tell him—I’ll never tell him—of the things Sticks said to me. Things I fairly deserved, things anyone would have deserved, if they did what I did, and left that smile to die.

 _You saved them. I’d have killed them._ He muttered that, not meeting my eyes.

I don’t know what to make of words that aren’t his. Aren’t his mind nor his heart.

 _A wonder you didn’t kill your brothers_ , I said, hoping it wouldn’t make him worse—whatever worse _was_. _They’re a set of stubborn cusses, one after the other. I’ve all but wrung their necks while you were sleeping._

It made him worse, but only by a moment. I could see a little flicker of decision pass over him, like a man who chose to die tomorrow rather than today.

 _I can see,_ he said, _why you would not like them._

I didn’t like them. He was a poor bit of brightly colored glass, however, shattered in my hands. I said, _Didn’t say that. They’re all right. At least, as much as they’re like you._

 _Don’t_ , he pleaded. _Don’t. If you knew…_ And then he was himself again, the most terrible and tender of all the selves I’ve known of him, begging me to hate him with an endless rush of charm. _You’ll hate me, Soldier,_ he whispered, smiling something ugly. _Maybe a week—maybe a month—however long I live, and you live with me. You should have let Russandol remain so. There was something rather noble about that prodigal. I don’t hate him half so much as I did when I was him._

 _You’re talking nonsense,_ I said, loving him.

Fingon came back, then. It was always so cruel, how time kept on. I had to leave him there, with the doctor to suffocate him in kindness.

I couldn’t even say what I knew. What I understood about how hurt hung on him.

I couldn’t teach a doctor his trade. 

The horse doesn’t kill Frog. Of course it doesn’t. That child survived a war and the hunter. He creeps out at last, content with having caused Estrela no end of trouble. He curls up in her arms, and she staggers under his weight until I take him, warm and limp, and lay him in the hay.

There’s another woman here, sleeping in the far corner of the mow.

“That’s Mollie,” Estrela says, very low. “She’s a friend.”

We climb down again, one after the other, and walk between the stalls so we can talk.

“It’s not past ten o’clock,” I say, judging from the angle of the moon through the stalls’ vents. “Don’t you want to see him?”

Her breathing moves with the horses’—too slow for a woman.

“His brothers are with him,” she says at last. “I won’t plague him tonight.”

I think of how he asked me to stay. “You wouldn’t be a plague.” Groping in the darkness for words, I say, “I think we’re all he knows.”

“No!” She lowers her voice. “No, that can’t be. He—poor boy. Poor, poor boy.” She sniffs wetly.

I’ve never done this afore. I reach for her. I hold her. I talk like I’ve a right to. Like we belong here. And maybe we do, because of him.

I tell her how the sight of him was too much for me at first, how I had to seek a little solace in the hall. How I sobbed, in plain sight of anyone who passed. I do not tell her how Gothmog would have laughed at that, though I think it myself.

“He’s Russandol,” I finish, stroking her hair like she is Gelmir. Like she is—him. “They always think they’ve killed him, but it doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t it?” She asks, muffled.

I shake my head. I’m not a man of faith, or I wasn’t, till the sight of him made me pray—twice in a forest, once in a cold grey room.

“Not as long as he’s alive.”


End file.
